Conceptualización de la gestión de la estrategia REDD+ para Colombia

The results of the thematic analysis of the research for this thesis were consistent with the five contexts identified by Davis in his study of 22 parents, who said that they had stopped or tried to stop the use of physical discipline (Davis, 1999). These contexts are experiential, regulatory, ideological, relational and biographical. The findings for these contexts or categories are indicated under the relevant headings in this section of the chapter and under each heading is an explanation of each category. As most of the participants identified more than one context, the following table shows the contexts for each participant.

Table 4.1: Motivational context in relation to each participant

With this table as an overview the data for each context is detailed under the following sub-headings.

Experiential Motivation

The experiential category of the motivation to stop physical punishment includes the experiences the participant had as a result of smacking their child and the concern they felt at their child’s response.

Motivational Context Participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Experiential _{* * * * * * * * *} Regulatory _{* *} Ideological _{* * * * * * *} Relational _{* * * *} Biographical _{* * * *}

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In the findings for this research the experiential motivation fitted into three sub- categories through which the participants were motivated. Firstly the emotional impact on themselves and the child, for causing pain and the poor role modelling of hitting, secondly the fear of losing control and seriously harming the child and thirdly the ineffectiveness of the intervention to stop the child’s unwanted behaviour.

Out of the ten interviews nine of the participants were motivated to stop the use of physical discipline by an experience or experiences of administering it. Of those nine, five of the participants were currently parenting and four spoke retrospectively. One of the participants who spoke from a current parenting role also spoke retrospectively, with an age gap of over 10 years between the youngest and second to youngest child. Of those that were currently parenting all had other motivation as well as experiential. One participant reported that all three sub categories of; ineffectiveness, poor role modelling and not wanting to lose control, outlined at the beginning of this section, were the reasons for stopping the use of physical discipline. When asked to talk further about their beliefs about poor role modelling, their response described the motivation both from the ineffectiveness of the practice and their concern for poor role modelling reasons:

“Yes, it’s not working………….. And [it means] I’ve just smacked her, telling her not to smack. That’s just teaching her to smack.”

In terms of ineffectiveness one participant reported that they did find the use of physical discipline effective however this was only in the short term and would not work repetitively. They also said

“I did hit xxxxx when he was a toddler, he just hit me back so I could just see it was going to be futile unless I kept hitting harder and harder and I didn’t want to do that.”

One participant talked about ineffectiveness in relation to the size and age of their children:

“I think as the boys got older I could see that it was turning into a war zone and I’m talking about seven and I probably didn’t do it after that because my kids are very tall anyway.”

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Three of the participants who were currently parenting described incidents of administering physical discipline that had had an emotional impact on them, motivating them to practise alternative ways of disciplining their children:

“……..Although once, once, I got really angry,…..and this was the turning point, actually, I got really angry…….and she was just really naughty……..and I pulled her hair to grab her,…..and even now I feel guilty about that and that’s really bad behaviour on my part……….That was the turning point because I thought ‘this is terrible’.”

When asked how they administered physical discipline another participant said:

“With an open hand and I remember smacking him so hard that the imprints of my rings were left on his buttocks……….and that shocked me into thinking, ‘Oh no!’”

All four participants that spoke retrospectively also identified other motivating factors. One participant exclusively spoke of the fear of losing control and seriously physically harming the child. This participant had physically punished their child by hitting him with a stick that broke with the force. When asked if they didn’t feel so good about hurting the child they responded by saying:

“Oh, no, I was actually scared that I was going to hurt the kids…….I used to feel scared of the kids and I was only scared that I was going to hurt them.”

When further asked if they were worried about losing their temper they responded:

“No, I think it was I just don’t know my own strength…….and being such a little kid [five-eight years old] and by hitting him with the amount of force that I did hit him and I broke the stick. To me it didn’t seem as though it was too excessive but when the stick broke I thought [pause] well that was quite a heavy stick. I still have it here today.”

Another participant who also spoke retrospectively described an incident of physical punishment that motivated change:

“There is a moment that sits in my memory banks and will never go away,……I smacked, hit my daughter and bruises came up on her leg and that was one of those moments of ‘I have to find a different way to do this’.”

The same participant described an episode of physical punishment in an effort to stop the child from entering the parents’ bedroom at night that also motivated change:

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“………we told him if he walked over the wooden spoon that was on the kitchen floor that we would use it and smack him all the way back to his bedroom. And we did that. And it’s horrifying, it’s horrifying!”

Another participant, speaking retrospectively, described two incidents that alerted the participant that physical discipline could be a problem:

“…….I did think the two occasions when my daughter was smacked prolonged and very severely……….that there was a problem with that, definitely a problem with that,…….that my [wife/husband] had ……lost control of themself …….in their smacking of her.”

The participant went on to describe the experience and the impact it had on them:

“….I was more concerned about being found out by someone at school about that there’d been a bruise on her bottom, but I think there was an element of feeling for her, as well; the fact that she was bruised and that it was quite a severe, abusive hiding that she had had.”

Another participant who reported only one incident of hurting their child and spoke retrospectively, described the motivation to ensure that it would not happen again:

“It was something I did and I didn’t want to have this guilty feeling and bad feelings because I didn’t believe they should be punished. They are kids.”

The majority of the participants reported that they had experienced significant moments of physically disciplining their child that had impacted on their decision to stop its practice. The following section reports on the regulatory motivators that impacted on the participants’ decision.

Regulatory Motivation

Regulatory motivation (Davis, 1999) for stopping the use of physical discipline of their children includes the belief, by the parent, that smacking is a punishable activity. They may have been informed that physical punishment of their child may result in prosecution or a withdrawal of services.

Of the ten participants, two talked about the regulatory factors which motivated them to stop physical discipline. One spoke retrospectively and the other spoke from a current parenting context. The retrospective participant identified the regulatory motivation alongside other motivation and described the following:

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“I was encouraged with much enthusiasm to attend Playcentre…….So it’s a rule, if you go to Playcentre you cannot smack your children or any other child during the session”

The participant who spoke from a current parenting context identified the regulatory motivation as the sole motivation for stopping the use of physical discipline even though their beliefs and attitudes did not agree with the regulation. When asked how physical discipline fitted with their work with children they responded by saying:

“Well you just know you can’t do that.”

When asked if they were told not to do it and to find other ways they replied:

“Yes definitely. But I mean its hard work. And I’ll tell you what, that is why the job’s not getting done properly.”

Only two participants reported a regulatory motivation in their decision to stop practising physical discipline. The following section reports on the ideological motivation that encouraged participants to stop smacking their children.

Ideological Motivation

Ideological reasons (Davis, 1999) for the stopping of smacking include; changes from the belief in parental rights and power and control to consideration of children’s rights and the belief that children are smaller more vulnerable members of society.

Seven of the ten participants identified ideological factors that motivated them to cease using physical discipline. Four were speaking from a current parenting perspective and three were speaking retrospectively. All seven participants who were motivated by ideological reasoning also identified other motivating factors.

One of the participants who had a 14 year age gap between their oldest and youngest child spoke from both a retrospective and current parenting perspective. This participant had identified the importance of role modelling behaviour with their child and when asked to speak further about it they responded with their beliefs about children’s rights:

“..If you’re at work and you do something wrong at work your boss doesn’t come in and smack you, does he? He just doesn’t do it. You have a respectful conversation, hopefully, and there’s no reason why you can’t treat children like that. You can’t demand respect, you have

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to earn it and I want her to respect me so I need to respect her, so it’s as simple as that.”

At the end of the interview they used a similar metaphor to stress their beliefs about children’s rights:

“Think about how you would feel if somebody was smacking you because you’ve just dropped a plate or taken something you shouldn’t have done.”

Another participant, currently parenting young children, had the following to say from an ideological perspective:

“Like you wouldn’t hit a friend, so it’s that respect for your children, as a person, it was all of that, respecting them.”

Of the three participants who were speaking from a retrospective perspective and who mentioned ideological beliefs, one talked about not wanting to hurt the child from a fear of going ‘too far’ which although fits into the experiential context also suggests an ideological context of not wanting to hurt the child, one expressed a belief that they had no right to smack other people’s children from a parental rights perspective and one talked about children’s rights as an ideological motivation to not smack.

The following section reports on the findings on the relational motivation to stop the practice of physical discipline.

Relational Motivation

Relational motivation (Davis, 1999) to stop physical discipline includes the motivation that participants identified when family and friends disagreed with the participants’ use of physical discipline.

Four participants in this study identified that part of the motivation to stop the use of physical discipline came from the feedback from family or friends who did not agree with or approve of the physical discipline that the participant was using on their children. One participant described the encouragement of a friend to attend Playcentre where physical discipline was not allowed. Although at the time the participant initially resisted the regulatory motivation of the Playcentre, in hindsight they realised that the introduction was significant in changing their beliefs about physical discipline:

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“It [physical discipline] stopped as I learnt several things. I was encouraged with much enthusiasm to attend Playcentre……I went along to Playcentre and I noticed very quickly the support around not smacking.”

Also from a retrospective perspective another participant described how they were influenced by a partner following an incident of physical punishment:

“After that [physical punishment] I sat down and spoke with my partner asked [them] if [they] thought it was severe and [they] said yes. And I thought about it for a while and then I started to get scared of the kids. [I was] scared that I was going to hurt them.”

Of the two participants currently parenting, both described their own learning in relation to their partners’ use of discipline and the way they could now identify some of the partners’ use of discipline as inappropriate:

“But what I have noticed is, since doing that parenting course, is that I really notice when my [husband/wife] uses……….physical things like drag her off our little baby, things like that……I really don’t like it.”

Another participant said:

“My [husband/wife] was a smacker………[they] would walk in, [they] would smack them and [they] would go off and do something and all of a sudden it clicked one day, what the hell are you doing?…….[they’re] not even having a conversation with them.”

The relational motivation to stop the practice of physical discipline was experienced by four of the participants. An equal number of participants reported that their own experience of physical discipline as a child had an impact on their decision to stop the practice with their children. This is detailed in the following section.

Biographical Motivation

Biographical reasons (Davis, 1999) for the cessation of physical discipline include the experiences the participants had when they were physically disciplined as a child, and the memories and feelings that they have carried with them about this.

All of the participants were asked about the discipline they received as a child. Their experiences varied from no physical discipline to severe physical discipline. Of the ten participants, four identified that their own experiences as a child had a direct impact on their decision to stop using physical discipline. Two of these participants were

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speaking from a retrospective perspective, one of whom had described a particularly severe upbringing by their own parents. When asked if this had had an impact on their decision to not use physical discipline they said:

“I was thinking about my own upbringing and I’m thinking to myself well I’m not going to punish him, I’m going to explain everything to him.”

They went on to say:

“I think it was the fact that it was my flesh and blood………the fact that I’d made something and I wasn’t going to destroy it, like what they had done, I wanted to be different.”

Another participant who spoke from a retrospective perspective also described severe physical punishment in their own home life, although they reported that the physical discipline that they received was not as severe as their siblings. When asked how they felt after being punished with ‘the wooden spoon’ they responded by saying:

“I felt very, very sad……….I didn’t like it, and that’s when I actually decided that I’m not going to, from my childhood my mum was a good example for me and I never, ever wanted to be like her, and I decided from very early childhood that this is not the person I am going to be. I am going to be a very caring mum and I’m going to be understanding, not beating or hitting my children…..”

A participant who was currently parenting had the following to say about an incident of administering physical discipline:

“……I remember thinking I do not want to be like my parents and I don’t want my son to have the same fear that I had…..”

This participant also described the impact that childhood physical discipline had had on a sibling:

“She said to me she remembers smacks and things like that and she doesn’t want to do that to her children.”

Not all participants who had experienced physical punishment as children were motivated to change their disciplinary style because of their childhood experience. The summary of the levels of physical punishment experienced by the participants when they were growing up is reported in more detail in the ‘Type, context and biography of physical discipline’ section of this chapter. This summary demonstrates that only one of the ten participants had not been physically disciplined as a child.

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The five contexts for the motivation to change child disciplinary practice for each participant is summarised in table 4.2 showing the contexts identified for each participant, at the beginning of this section on the motivation to not smack.

The following section reports on the beliefs held by the participants both before and after they had made the decision to not smack their children.